On the Record

By: Barbara Grzincic

On the Cover:  Welcome to the first Monday in October! This morning marks the Supreme Court debut of Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and Assistant Public Defender Celia Anderson Davis, who will argue over a Hagerstown man’s child sex abuse conviction. The question is whether a request for counsel, years earlier, should have stopped police from questioning the suspect without a lawyer after they obtained additional information. Read the main story, some advice from Gansler’s predecessor, and a preview of the new term.

In the News: The Court of Appeals heard argument in a legal malpractice case that challenges the “case within a case” methodology … the ban on self-represented lawyers claiming attorneys’ fees applies even to bad faith or frivolous actions, the Court of Special Appeals holds … Maryland Legal Services Corp. renews its quest for a higher filing-fee surcharge … Sen. Ben Cardin finds a civil audience for his health-care talk at UB Law… and a former CBS Early Show personality appeals a ruling that knocked out his medical malpractice claim.

Also:

• Paul Tiburzi remembers the time he argued against the D.C. lawyer who went on to become Chief Justice of the United States;
• An Owings Mills man got a $588,000 verdict in his lawsuit against a home-improvement contracting firm, but will also seek to hold the contractor individually liable;
• Read the Week in Review and our Law Digest, this week with cases from the Court of Appeals, the 4th Circuit and the U.S. District Court for Maryland.

By: Steve Lash

The Supreme Court will be packed for Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and Assistant Public Defender Celia A. Davis when they argue the case of Maryland v. Shatzer before the justices.

The draw will not be the case itself, though it does present an intriguing right to counsel issue. Nor will most of the public be enticed primarily by the participants (with apologies to Mr. Gansler and Ms. Davis).

No, the attraction will be the date of the high-court showdown: Oct. 5, the first Monday in October. Not only will the day mark the opening of the Supreme Court’s 2009-2010 term but also, presumably, the first day on the bench for Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s nominee to succeed former Justice David H. Souter, who retired this summer.

A Senate vote on Sotomayor’s anticipated confirmation is expected within the next few weeks.

Maryland v. Shatzer is scheduled to be the second case argued on that historic day.

In Shatzer, the state is appealing a Maryland Court of Appeals decision that threw out an accused child molester’s conviction because police questioned him nearly three years after he first requested an attorney. The Maryland court said the time span did not vitiate Michael Blaine Shatzer Sr.’s invocation of his right to counsel, and that police, years later, were barred from questioning him until an attorney was provided.

By: jackie.sauter

FYI — OMalleywatch.com has this post today on the possibility that Maryland’s attorney general, Douglas F. Gansler, could be tapped for some other government job “within the next two weeks.” Gansler’s office, though, is downplaying the possibility of any (imminent) change of scenery.

“It’s safe to say the attorney general will be here for quite a while,” spokeswoman Raquel Guillory says.

Gansler was, of course, one of the new president’s earliest backers in Maryland and co-chaired his campaign here. Back in December, Gansler said he would participate in the transition as an advisor to the Justice Department, but his political director “played down rumors that the attorney general himself was interested in becoming a U.S. attorney,” according to Politicker.com.

Gansler himself was even more direct in an interview with The Daily Record last April, when senators Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were still in the race for the nomination. Asked what an Obama presidency would mean for his own career, here’s what the AG said:

“Nothing. Makes me proud. And it really does. … There aren’t any jobs, for example, that would be attractive to me or anything like that.”

Still, notions of attractiveness can change over the better part of a year (or should I say, “quite a while”?). Why, another year would take us to 2010, an election year for the offices of both the attorney general and governor…

Ah, but that’s a blog for another day.

Barbara Grzincic, Managing Editor/Law